Hayabusa Rider
Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
I can imagine an artificial superintelligence can lack consciousness and have strange, unintended reasoning ability that's dangerous, but if the civilization didn't collapse, the assumption must be that they succeeded in controlling the development of the unconscious superintelligence. That's what researchers are trying to do – make sure it shares similar values as us. And if they control it, they could move onto conscious artificial intelligence.
Do you think the argument from evil is sound? Because you’re making a very similar argument as the “God works in mysterious ways” routine.
As I said prior, I don't totally discount they could wipe us out, though I think personally civilizations always collapse. I could see a potentially utilitarian-esque reasoning (see below XD). It is the most scientific ethics viewpoint. I discount that they would be passive about suffering (i.e. oh, they're just ants) or that they’ll see us as a threat because a) it seems incredibly likely it would have already happened with berserker probes if advanced civilizations already exist in the Milky Way or the first advanced civilization would have preemptively colonized everywhere before other intelligent life formed b) they already would know advancing through all the technological hurdles necessitates high social advancement. Social development has to advance as technology advances. They’ve probably (no -- they must have) thought a helluva lot more about ethics than we have.
The Repugnant Conclusion for traditional utilitarians to wrack their brains over. There are actually several similar variants in traditional utilitarianism that are like the benevolent world exploder in negative utilitarianism.
“For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living” (Parfit 1984).
There's no argument from evil, but an argument based on biological realities from a scientific perspective.
Let's start with something familiar. Tell me of the morality of the octopus. After that what scientific basis exists for human sensibilities being a necessary component for intelligence expecially from a completely different ecosystem?
The best interspecies relationship in terms of understandings aren't between humans and dolphins or other primates but dogs. We have impacted each other's evolution for perhaps more than ten thousand years, perhaps much more. A dog can understand us and we it. Dogs are ridiculously loyal and trusting in their genes and we eat them. What does a dog know of our concept of morality, and where is it when eating man's best friend?
Back to "evil", what does that look like to something we cannot understand any more than a dog our philosophical argument? We are utterly unknowable in complex terms to other creatures on earth, arguably intelligent ones and this forms the core of my statement. Things may have something analogous to morality but in no way can it be said that it would apply to us any more than ours applies to a tree. We admire them when they grow into lovely shade trees or a fine piece of furniture with equal moral sensibilities. Note this is not to say that there is evil (or good) intent from our perspective, just that motives and standards of humans cannot be assumed to hold nor how they apply.
Anthropormiphization on an unknowable is speculation unincumbered by data as there is no basis for any assumption and that's assuming what was witnessed is what we are assuming to begin with.
IF this is something AND it's what we are speculating about I'm not sure that it's anything organic about it.
